Wednesday, May 17, 2006

I slipped about my theology degree within earshot of my son's preschool teacher yesterday.

An aide who attends the same church asked me whether my older boy would attend CCD in the Fall. And I told my outrage story about how I wanted to homeschool him his religious ed. because I am eminently qualified and experienced, yadda, yadda, yadda, spouting about my degree. His teacher perked right up.

And this evening at the school's art show, she offered me Elaine Pagels's Gnostic Gospels book. Her book was always one that I wanted to pick up but I hesitated because she has so many harsh critics. I trust that they know better than I about her reputation as a scholar. Then again, she's at Princeton, so she must have something going for her. Every TV program on the New Testament seems to interview her.

I'm not really interested in gnosticism anyway, not even now. It's enough that I came to recognize that I was one, even while professing orthodoxy. Maybe reading this book, I'll discover that I'm even more of one than I knew before.

My son's teacher said that the book is dense, in a scholarly sense, and while she finds what she can decipher interesting, it's a struggle for her to decode the theological language. She was frustrated that the book couldn't have been written in "laymen's terms" (her own choice of words). Well, some books are but then they are frustrating at the other end, as being too simplistic. I'll give her book a look and see whether I can figure why everyone makes her out as a heretic.

In my experience, most readers can't distinguish between an author sharing professional theory and personal belief. People tend to take one for the other or think that an author believes personally in their own theories.

Case in point: a lecture two summers ago with Fr. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor (I guess he hasn't died yet; I know he was very sick around Christmas time) in which the Dominican priest posited that the Apostle Paul was unclear about Christ's divinity, judging from the christology of his genuine letters. Well, immediately, several people in his audience demanded clarification, and the questions came like this, "Wait, are you telling me that YOU don't believe that Jesus was divine?!" Craziness. Plenty of fundamentalist Catholics, right?

Anyway, I got to give Elaine Pagels a hearing, I s'pose. And learn to keep my mouth shut about my theological training.

2 comments:

michele said...

At least she didn't ask you to define a particular Greek or Hebrew word or to explain a PCA pastor's position on the ontological status of the Son :-).

Moonshadow said...

Or ask me to bring back to the evangelical fold someone who is questioning the "penal substitution" view of the atonement?

What came of that?